By keyboard, night or day, Daphne Kirkwood personifies the “human” in HR. With her super sunny disposition and brainy command of FastPivot’s virtual relations, she proves the value of her “HR Director” designation on a daily basis. In fact, she’s our virtual team management expert go-to-gal too.
Offline, Kirkwood is anything but human. As any athlete knows, it takes a machine to whip a Half-Ironman, which is what Kirkwood recently did at the Augusta 70.3 Half Ironman:
“For a personal first Half I.M., Augusta 70.3 race proved to be a great course choice! Little did I know that the swim would be super fast with the river current with “river cheerleaders” lining the swim on their tug boats and bridges; or that the hills during the bike portion would allow me to use my WNC road “climbing” skills, aka “spidermonkey”, legs to zoom past all the flatlanders up the hills; or that I would need the immense crowd support that lined the streets during the half marathon run to keep me going at the end of the race. Sometimes it is just best to go into a race and “see how it goes” instead of worrying about all the little details. After this particular race, I realized that each leg of the course was a great match for my first Half-Ironman event. I went away from my first experience exhilerated and ready to do more.”
Some might ask, how did she have the time to train to defeat such a formidable gauntlet?
“Working at FastPivot allowed me to make a personal goal a dream come true! As a FastPivot employee, I am not only working for one of the most dynamic e-commerce companies, I am working for a company that believes in and promotes flexible and healthy lifestyles. Being part of a virtual team with a flexible work philosophy, I was able to fully train and prepare for the 1.2 miles swim, 56 mile bike and 13.1 mile run in Augusta, Georgia on September 26th, 2010. Given the luxury of making my work schedule fit around my training needs, I was able to feel confident and fully ready to tackle the 70.3 Half Ironman race head on.”
Many generation x’ers, like Kirkwood, and others on the FastPivot team, grew up watching Baby Boomers live their lives to just work, work, work. That reminded many X’ers how they don’t want to spend their working years. There is a healthy life-work balance to strike in order to have such flexibility, workplace balance and the ability to grow and be developed personally and professionally. The balance is in not discouraging that kind of freedom, but in embracing it.
FastPivot doesn‚Äôt casually suggest a work-life-balance, we empower it.¬† We’ve found through research and experience that this type of flexible work environment brings a greater motivation for employees‚Äô to do and be the best they can for their company. We have found that by encouraging virtual team members to “live their dreams,” they in turn become the most dedicated and productive team members for which any company could ask. With an employee-centric company philosophy that advocates such personal development, who could possibly argue with a mission statement life that?
FastPivot has a “toolbox” full of various technologies that are used for team communication and collaboration among different cities, states and time zones.  To find out how to create your own successful virtual team? Contact FastPivot to request more information. We offer business consultations and training programs to show you how you too can have a more balanced and happy team of employees.
That is a very progressive company. It is good to see that companies not only support but embrace the concept of the whole person. Happy and healthy employees make the best employees. This is also a good way to increase loyalty to the company.